T. H. White | Criticism

The Master is an ingenious extravaganza on the borders of science fiction, satire and straight adventure. It has affinities with the Hibbert Journal and the Boy's Own Paper. It reminds me of The Tempest, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, and Lost Horizon with perhaps a breadth of High Wind in Jamaica. Nicky and Judy, children of a duke, land from a yacht on the island of Rockall with their dog and are first pushed into the sea, then shot at, then rescued by the Master's agents. The Master is a physicist of genius aged 157 with singular telepathic powers, and a brain so extraordinary that he has to paralyse his higher critical centres with whisky before he can get down to mundane matters as opposed to the global and cosmic problems which are his preoccupation. His agents include a stock philosophical Chinaman, a Welsh doctor, an ex-R.A.F. pilot...